New Govt. engineering colleges get thumbs-up from students

Only a handful of seats remain to be filled in the newly started Government College of Engineering in Srirangam in the ongoing process of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission 2013 single-window counselling.

The few remaining seats under the SC and ST quotas are expected to be filled in a matter of days. The start of the college announced by the Chief Minister Jayalalithaa only a few months ago would start functioning temporarily from the campus of Bharathidasan Institute of Technology (BIT).

A committee had studied the facilities on the BIT campus for starting the college with five branches: civil, computer science engineering, electronics and communication engineering, electrical and electronics engineering, and mechanical engineering. There will be an intake of 60 students per branch, official sources said.

But for nearly 60 per cent of unfilled seats in CSE branch, the Government College of Engineering in Thanjavur district, set to function temporarily from Raja Higher Secondary School has been patronised well by the students in the counselling process.

The main reason for the overwhelming admissions in the newly started government colleges of engineering is because the fee the students pay is much lesser even compared to those admitted in constituent colleges of university. The other government colleges of engineering are at Coimbatore, Bargur, Dharmapuri, Tirunelveli, and Bodinayakanur.

Most of the seats in the Bharathidasan Institute of Technology (BIT), one of the five constituent colleges of the Anna University, Chennai, in Tiruchi region, have been filled. But the seats in Mechanical and Civil engineering branches under Tamil Medium have been filled so far only in single digits. These two branches are being offered in Tamil medium since 2010 in four other constituent colleges also: at Tirukuvalai in Nagapattinam district, Panrutti in Cuddalore district, Pattukottai in Thanjavur district and in Ariyalur district. These five constituent colleges are under the jurisdiction of the Tiruchi regional centre of the Anna University, Chennai.

With the inclusion of the two newly started government colleges of engineering in Srirangam and Thanjavur, and four self-financed colleges, the number of colleges in the Tiruchi region has gone up to 101.

Of the four private self-financed engineering colleges that would start functioning from this academic year, two are in Ariyalur district and one each in Nagapattinam and Perambalur districts. In 2012-13, seven self-financed colleges were started in the Tiruchi region encompassing Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Pudukottai, Ariyalur, Perambalur, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur and Cuddalore districts.